IRON MAIDEN STUDIO ALBUM COVERS SURVIVOR 2015: Results -> Somewhere In Time wins!

Satisfied with the results?


  • Total voters
    12
That was a nice touch, I thought. Something different. I like Eddie being there, but not the focus.
Yea, it feels more like the focus is on the tank Eddie. If you're not looking hard enough you might think that's the only appearance of Eddie. The cover as a whole fits the mood perfectly too. It manages to have a dark/fairly serious vibe without being too gritty or serious. Something the X Factor artwork utterly fails at.

I like Virtual XI too. It looks how I'd expect an Iron Maiden cover to look like in the 90s. Really the only covers that are straight up bad are Dance of Death and X Factor and really the former would be fine without the CGI figures.
 
AMOLAD is solid, much better than what came before and after.
More subtle and very much in keeping with the tone of the album.
X Factor is ugly but in a good way, if you get my meaning. Very gripping image and a nice curve ball that is a drastic change, yet still obviously Maiden.
Again, it also fits the tone of the album.

Virtual XI is too garish and the kid in the goggles just seems tacked on.
My next vote will be for TFF for similar reasons — the tone and the colour scheme just don't work for me.
Both just seem a little silly.
 
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TFF is by far the worst. Cartoon violence for kiddies. How and why grown men put that on their album cover mystifies me. Plus, Eddie no longer even looks human.

Marketing strategy, I think, same as the TFF action sci-fi video. They see a potential market in the younger crowd who like the lighter side of the 80s stuff and general retro appeal. But they've tried to bring the artwork up to date because 80s Eddie doesn't pass for lightweight horror any more, he's not sufficiently 'nasty'. It's an odd mix, when the music itself runs deeper than that. That's part of the reason why I'm concerned they'll try to rewrite NOTB for today's kids with the new album.

I still prefer TFF to the Blaze era covers, though, where they acknowledge a popular culture trend towards more serious and less ostentatious, but then have reworked Eddies in it anyway, like an ill-fitting relic of the 80s.
 
X Factor is ugly but in a good way, if you get my meaning. Very gripping image and a nice curve ball that is a drastic change, yet still obviously Maiden.
Again, it also fits the tone of the album.
Well said. It does fit the album. It never has crossed my mind that it is too gritty or too serious. I had to get used to the idea that it was a photo instead of a drawing, but that's about it.
Virtual XI is too garish and the kid in the goggles just seems tacked on.
Had to look up what "garish" and "tacked on" means. I disagree somewhat with the former. Bright, but beautiful colours. The latter: I am the happy owner of a CD with a 3D version of the cover. Nothing tacked on, no problem at all.
 
It took me almost 10 years to realize that was a kid with a VR headset sitting on the cover of VXI. That's a problem.
 
Iron Maiden
X Factor
Final Frontier

The more I look at Virtual XI, the more I like it.
The more I look at NPFTD, the less I like it.
 
Your album? Which artwork does it have on front? :-)

I thought the same as what Flash said, but perhaps another version exists with the other artwork on the front?
 
I thought the same as what Flash said, but perhaps another version exists with the other artwork on the front?

It does, I held a copy in my hands just yesterday. It was made for retailers who didn't want to put the 'proper' cover on front because it was too gritty.
 
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